Orchestras Canada

On November 9, friends and supporters of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra learned that the orchestra had recorded its fifth consecutive balanced budget in 2010-11 – a season that also marked the orchestra’s 50th anniversary, its first-ever sold-out classics performance since moving to the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium 25 years earlier, and the winning of the Vida Peene Award.

Commenting on the good news, TBSO Board President Paul Inksetter said, “Our 50th anniversary season was a good one for us. While we still face a number of challenges, we are more confident of our future now than we have been for a very long time. We have a wonderful new Music Director in Arthur Post. Our audiences love the new energy he has brought to our programming.”

For more information about the TBSO, please visit tbso.ca.

Last week, the Ontario Arts Council announced that it had awarded the Vida Peene Award for 2011 to the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra. The $10,000 award is presented every second year to an outstanding Ontario orchestra, and this year the TBSO was cited by the peer jury as a “vital organization in this northern city, embraced by its community with a remarkable audience base. It regularly plays to capacity houses and shows excellent commitment to Canadian composers and soloists.”

For more information, please visit arts.on.ca.

Last week, the Ontario Arts Council presented the Vida Peene Award for 2009 to the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra. The $5000 award was presented by OAC board member Adrien Lamoureux at the orchestra’s second of six concerts this season.

The SSO was identified by the peer jury as a “vital organization in this northern city, embraced by its community with a remarkable audience base, regularly playing to capacity houses.” Jurors further commended the orchestra for its “excellent education programs that build awareness and appreciation of music in children and youth.” Jury members included Dr. John Burge, Associate Director at Queen’s University School of Music; Vicky Dvorak, a violinist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony; Michael Grit, Theatre Manager of the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts; Glenn Klassen, Music Director of the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra in Alberta and Mary-Liz Warwick, local business woman and active volunteer member of the Sudbury community.

The late Vida Peene was a Hamilton-based arts patron whose remarkable legacy continues to nurture the arts in Ontario and Canada. The Ontario Arts Council is one of eight specified organizations that receive income through investment earnings from Peene’s original bequest to the Canada Council for the Arts. Income from The Vida Peene Fund is given every two years to an Ontario orchestra other than the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (the TSO having been provided for separately through Vida Peene’s estate). Past recipients include the Windsor Symphony Orchestra (2007) and the Esprit Orchestra (2005). For many years prior to 2005, income from the fund helped to support the costs of the Ontario Festival of Youth Orchestras, a project then administered by Orchestras Canada.